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Q: What is the range of Bluetooth transmitter/receivers?
A: Bluetooth is designed for very low power use, and the transmission range will only be 10m, about 30ft. High-powered Bluetooth devices will enable ranges up to 100m (300ft). Considering the design philosophy behind Bluetooth, even the 10m range is adequate for the purposes Bluetooth is intended for. Later versions of the Bluetooth spec may allow longer ranges. (Source: http://www.mobileinfo.com/Bluetooth/FAQ.htm#t6

But with battery power still limited, you might be able to use your WiFi enabled cellphone of PDA as a relay station. I'm sure somebody will be clever enough to overcome the 10m/30ft range issue...

Actually, bluetooth's physical bandwidth is only 721kb. It's amazing what google will tell you if you ask it.

http://www.mobileinfo.com/Bluetooth/FAQ.htm#t5
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1086977875.html

There should be a -1 (Don't know jack shit) mod option. On the other hand, I'm glad you've mastered your buzzwords.

How about reading the link in the article. Flash OFDM is specifically designed for wireless broadband as opposed to 2.5G and 3G data solutions available from the telcos you mentioned.

Few FAQs for those BlueTooth newbies outthere...

BlueTooth Faq
Nokia BlueTooth Faq
Another BlueTooth Faq

Selling doodads on the Web is not an inexpensive way to make billions, and the malls are still jammed with shoppers.

You know when you've got a double negative way up in the article's lead paragraph, that what you're about to read is gonna be slop.

When Starbucks announced in January 2001 that most of its outlets would offer wireless broadband Internet access to their frappuccino-addicted customers, skeptics questioned its plan. Turns out Starbucks was ahead of its time: the chain now has thousands of wireless cafés across the US, and space on the Wi-Fi bandwagon has become scarce.

How exactly has space on the Wi-Fi bandwagon become scarce? And even though Starbucks has thousands of wireless cafes up and running, what kind of profits, or losses, are being made? We don't get any kind of analysis here, because the article just breathlessly jumps ahead and asks this question:

How much are people willing to pay? Can the many service providers work out access-sharing agreements with competitors so consumers don't have to shell out for multiple accounts?

Sorry, but that's the wrong question to ask. The question isn't how much people are willing to pay. The question is if they're willing to pay at all. I suspect that Wi-Fi will be the ultimate loss-leader for businesses who profit when their customers linger. Lose money on the Wi-Fi; gain it back by selling an extra $2.00 coffee. But again, the article doesn't even bring up this idea. Instead, we get:

These details should be sorted out in the next year or two, and consolidation is pretty much guaranteed. Once that happens, Wi-Fi will be even more widespread than a certain chain of cafés.

Sure, but will Wi-Fi still even be available at that certain chain of cafes? Will a large enough portion of paying customers keep Starbuck's network financially viable? See, for instance, the rather sobering third item published a couple months ago on this page.

I use a wireless network all the time. It's truly a useful and earth-shaking technology. Which makes it galling to see such a superficial analysis of its vast possibilities. There's no doubt that Wi-Fi will produce amazing changes in how we live and how we work, but the author of this article did a terrible job of backing up his suppositions.

Dunno if the company itself has a website, but you could take a look at this.

Take a look at their tracking system, too. Pretty cool stuff. Not sure if I'd call it divine, though.

With the help of Lucent and Ericsson as per this article

"In 2Q02, 802.11b hardware shipments grew 15%, totaling 3.9 million units." 3.9 million x 4 quaters/year = 15.6 million/year if volumes are at least flat for the next three quarters. x 365 = 5.7 billion bluetooth devices produced per year? I read in a magazine recently that the total number of computers ever produced is expected to reach one billion in the next few months.

Poking around the internet, all I see are projections that perhaps bluetooth unit volumes will catch up to 802.11 this year. "It is not fair to run comparisons between Bluetooth and WLAN regarding the number of chips being shipped or expected to be shipped for either technology. Because of its price and the type of products where it is going into, Bluetooth will soon surpass 802.11 chip shipments but dollar volume might still be smaller for some time."

"Our annual Bluetooth study predicted Bluetooth chipset shipments would rise from close to zero in 2000 to just over 10 million units in 2001, and the year will end not far from this figure."

Could you please post a reference for your claim that "more bluetooth devices are made each day than 802.11b in a year" or a retraction? Thanks in advance.

Yeah. Actually, something more like a bucket-brigade system would be a lot more cool. Many people are working on this type of thing, which indeed needs a certain cellular phone user (actually not cellular if p2p) density, as well as users voluntarily alloing their phones to route for others. Could do it with Wi-Fi, too.